About ten (?) years ago Janice wished that we could do something with decorative lights in the maple tree in our front yard at Halloween like what we do at Christmas (strings of Christmas lights wrapped around many different branches). I asked her what she had in mind and she pointed out that the maple tree was round like a pumpkin and would look cool like a large carved pumpkin (the kind that have a candle or light inside to make the eyes, nose & mouth glow). I took her up on this idea and created four wooden frames--two triangle eyes, one triangle nose, and a mouth with four jagged triangle teeth. Then I wrapped strands of miniature orange lights around each frame. I hung each frame independently in the maple tree. This required a lot of climbing and adjusting to get the eyes, nose and mouth hanging at the right heights together. The large glowing pumpkin face in our front yard tree is unusual (I've never seen anything quite like it). Over the years it has received many kudos from kids and adults.
Several years ago, as I have gotten older and more cautious (and lazier?) I decided to stop climbing way up in the maple tree. One year I hung the face pieces on our front porch instead. Last year I hung the pieces together from a long wooden dowel rod and then hung the dowell rod from two branches in the front of the tree (and at a lower height than I did in my old tree-climbing days). This system not only made it easier and quicker to hang the face up in the tree, it made it easier to take it down and store it.
This year when Janice found strands of orange LED lights at Costco (two 100-light strands for $10.00), I decided to restring my pumpkin face with these new lights. [I used the first set of lights Janice brought home to create a smaller electric pumpkin face to hang in the backyard where we can view it from our bedroom.] Taking off the strands of old filament lights and putting on the new strands of LED lights took several hours. After hanging the "new" pumpkin face up, I was happpy to see that the LED lights still create a dramatic display.
